A genus of bacteria known as Legionella contains approximately 30 different species. One species, Legionella pneumophila (L. pneumophila) is the causative agent for approximately 90% of all cases of an affliction known as Legionnaires' disease. Legionnaires' disease makes up 5-8% of atypical pneumonia cases and up to 20% of the Legionnaires' related atypical pneumonia cases are lethal and there are several serogroups within L. pneumophila associated with Legionnaires disease.
Currently, diagnosing Legionnaires disease typically requires detecting L. pneumophila in an appropriate sample which can be accomplished by growing L. pneumophila in culture, fluorescent antibody staining, or urinary antigen testing. Unfortunately, these methods can be time consuming and are not always sensitive. Additionally, not all of these techniques are capable of detecting all L. pneumophila serogroups and therefore may yield false negative test results in assays designed to detect L. pneumophila in a test sample. Accordingly, there is a need for methods and reagents capable of detecting L. pneumophila in a test sample that are both sensitive and sufficiently specific to detect disease causing L. pneumophila serogroups without detecting other Legionella species.